Introducing Orbit
Orbit helps companies drive adoption by understanding and growing their developer communities.
Josh Dzielak Patrick Woods and Dustin Larimer.
November 18, 2019
Hi, we’re Orbit, and we’re building a company based on the principles of developer relationship management.
Since getting started in August, we’ve signed on investors and advisors including Heavybit, Harrison Metal, and a world-class group of angels who have extensive experience building developer-centric businesses, including James Tamplin (co-founder and CEO of Firebase), Sam Ramji (Apigee and Google), Andrew Miklas (co-founder and CTO of PagerDuty), and Aghi Marietti (co-founder and CEO of Kong). See the full list below.
Our core product combines data, a powerful API, and a modern user interface to give organizations deeper insight into their developer communities and better tools for growing and managing them.
If you’d like early access to Orbit, please drop your email address in the form below.
Software is adopted, not sold
We’re creating Orbit because convincing developers to adopt new technologies is hard. Developers famously reject traditional marketing and sales efforts, preferring to learn from people and communities they trust. As a result, founders and operators of developer-centric businesses struggle to adapt existing CRMs and marketing automation tools to the developer use case.
We think it’s time for something new. We believe that people working in emerging disciplines like developer experience and developer relations need tools built specifically for their needs. Tools built on the right principles for building communities, like the Orbit Model instead of the funnel.
About us
Orbit has three co-founders—Patrick, Dustin, and Josh. We've known each other since working together at analytics API company Keen IO, and each of us has spent a big part of our careers working with developers.
Josh was Keen’s VP Engineering and went on to lead the developer relations team at Algolia. After Keen, Patrick led customer success for machine-learning company Figure Eight. Dustin spent the last two years at Apple designing and making internal tools for developers. Patrick and Dustin live in San Francisco, with Josh a mere nine time zones away in Paris.
Leading up to Orbit, Josh and Patrick created DeveloperMode, an agency that helped companies with developer relations. We’re now 100% focused on Orbit and aren't taking on new clients, but we're always happy to chat with companies wanting to improve their developer adoption, just send us an email at founders@orbit.love.
We'll share knowledge, experience, and company updates here on the blog, at @OrbitModel on Twitter, and on Instagram.
If you work on developer adoption—as an advocate, evangelist, community manager, marketer, or founder—then what we're building is for you. If you'd like early access or are open to sharing your ideas on what Orbit can help you achieve, drop your email in the form below and we'll follow up.
We’re happy to have you in our orbit!
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Thank you to all of the angels who invested in Orbit’s pre-seed round:
James Tamplin (Firebase), Sam Ramji (Apigee), Andrew Miklas (PagerDuty), Aghi Marietti (Kong), Nina Khosla, Guillaume Montard (Bearer), Martyn Davies (Nexmo), Lou Kosak (AirBnb, Plaid), Michelle Wetzler (Twilio), and Kyle Wild, Dan Kador, and Ryan Spraetz (Keen IO).
You might also like:
- Why Orbit is Better Than Funnel for Developer Relations
- DevRel teams need tools and models created specifically for our discipline, and not just those adopted from other fields.
- Slack vs Discord vs Discourse: The best tool for your community
- An in-depth comparison of 3 top community platforms across dozens of factors.
- How we use Orbit to build Orbit
- A guide to how we use our product to build our community.